Buy American is interesting, but flawed

Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism, by Dana Frank, Beacon Press 316 pages

We've certainly entered a new era of trade wars. The Battle in Seattle against the World Trade Organization brought the issue dramatically into everyone's living room. Teamsters and Turtles marching in the streets against transnational corporate greed and imperialist globalization brought the trade debate to new levels. In the thick of this debate and timely as all get out, Dana Frank gives us her book, Buy American.

This is an interesting book tracing the history of trade, tariff and "protectionist" versus "free trade" movements back to colonial days. Frank makes the clear argument throughout the book that every time the working class and labor have bought into "Buy American" schemes they have been the losers, while the merchant, corporate and big business sponsors have done very well indeed.

Even more important the book shows that both sides of the "protectionist" versus "free trade" debate have been used by capitalist rulers to divert and blunt working class fight back.

Of the period in the late 1880s, when somewhat like today, workers and farmers were on the move, challenging the economic and social status quo, Frank writes, "The last thing the party leaders (Republican and Democrat) wanted was the specter that Tarbell (a crusading journalist of the day) raised: redistribution of wealth.

The tariff, by diverting if not diffusing class tensions into acceptable channels, promised to ensure prosperity for workers and farmers alike but without the messy prospect of challenging the rich or the new corporations.

As James L. Huston has argued in analyzing the Pennsylvania Republican Party's strategy in 1558, "the tariff provided a measure that could absorb working-class anger and channel the laborers' activities away from economic and social change and into acceptable political behavior."

From the Boston Tea Party to the structural economic crisis that devastated basic manufacturing industries in the late 1970s early 1980s, virtually every economic crisis has seen the birth of a variation on the Buy American theme.

Frank gives us a fascinating picture of how these campaigns took shape with lots of stories and examples. Every time the Buy American card has been played it has also resulted in increased levels of racism and national chauvinism.

As Frank aptly puts it, the Buy American debate gets people to draw the line between "them" and "us" along nationalist lines. And the more heated the debate gets the narrower the "us" becomes, totally obscuring class lines. Workers are asked to side with their industry, their company, their employer against the competition. Even if their employer is a union-buster using every trick in the book to lower wages and increase profits. Even if the competition is other workers.

Buy American campaigns have most often been accompanied by anti-immigrant and anti-foreign and anti-foreign born hysteria. Most of these campaigns have helped foster sharp racism against Black and Latino workers also. Very often, as in the Buy American craze of the early 1980s, Asian and Asian Americans have been scapegoated and targeted.

Frank also makes a good case for how the Cold War and anti-communism, often combined with Buy American and/or "free trade" arguments, served to weaken labor and ally sections with the ruling classes' corporate and economic agenda worldwide.

A large section of the book documents two Buy American episodes The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) campaign in the 1970s and the United Auto Workers (UAW) campaign in the 1980s. But devoting so much time to these examples also reveals a weakness of the book.

To be fair, Frank shows the role of some in the auto and textile industries in financing and organizing these specific campaigns. And she makes it clear how these industries profited as a result.

In particular she exposes Roger Millikin, the billionaire textile giant, and Richard Mellon Scafe, the billionaire ultra-rightist, and their roles in funding and organizing these campaigns. The book also points out that both unions later learned and rejected many of the arguments for these campaigns.

But on balance, concentrating so much attention and detail to how the ILGWU and the UAW bought into these Buy American schemes gives a one sided and one dimensional view. It is a narrow view of labor that will make it harder for some trade unionists to see the important lessons of the book.

Further, though the point is made, the book is weak on pointing out the role of the whole of the ruling class - that is the bankers, the industrialists, their politicians, their media and their supporters in orchestrating these campaigns. These are not the works of a few eccentric billionaire right wingers.

In fact, the 1970s and 80s were times of great ferment and debate in labor on these issues. Rank-and-file movements in all the mass production industries were challenging these as well as many other class collaborationist ideas.

The rank-and-file leaders of those days are now the progressive backbone of labor today. These are the forces that threw out the Meany-Kirkland policies and leaders in favor of a more class struggle orientation for labor. This was also the time of a rebirth of the left and left/center coalitions in labor that goes far beyond the narrow examples cited in the book.

The Battle in Seattle didn't just drop out of the sky. Its anti-corporate, anti-monopoly tone has its roots in the lessons and struggles learned in the 70s and 80s.

There is also a touch of "identity politics" in the book that unfortunately tends to chop up the class into components and obscure the common basic class interests that bind all workers and working people together. It is totally appropriate to point out racism, chauvinism, male supremacy as they are reflected in labor and the working class how else to overcome and build unity? At the same time it must be made abundantly clear that the source of these evils is capitalism and ruling class ideology.

Most importantly, the point must be made that all workers, Black, Brown, Asian and white, male and female, have a common class interest in eradicating racism and male supremacy from its ranks. Perhaps one of the most important changes taking place in organized labor today is the growing unity and internationalist outlook being fostered by the AFL-CIO's campaign of inclusion and coalition building.

Despite my criticisms I would urge all trade unionists to read this book. It will make a contribution to the debates now taking place around China and trade. While, for the most part, labor is way beyond the "Buy American" ideology of the 70s and 80s, there are still diversionary traps in the current debate. Both Pat Buchanan's vile economic nationalism and anti-Communist rage against China, and the global corporate champions of "free trade" with China, mean Chinese and American workers no good. Fair trade is not a win-win proposition.

As Frank points out in so many words, fair trade will be at the expense of corporate profits, capital mobility and acceptable labor, environmental and social standards determined democratically by working people not the corporations.

- Scott Marshall